US President Donald Trump met Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, in New York on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, their first encounter since the US military operation that captured Nicolás Maduro in January, according to G1, which cited Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The talks took place on the sidelines of a reception Trump hosted for foreign leaders during the UN General Assembly; Venezuela’s delegation, which includes the oil minister and representatives of state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), is pitching the country as a destination for investment in energy, mining and public debt. Trump again called Maduro an “outlaw dictator” and cited the oil deal struck with Caracas last month, which he described as “maybe the biggest deal ever made”. The same day, the opposition party Vente Venezuela said María Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, tried three times in the previous hours to return home — by boat from Panama and on flights to Aruba and Curaçao — and was blocked each time, bringing the total to seven failed attempts, according to the Spanish news agency EFE, in a report carried by ABC Color, and NTN24’s correspondent. Machado has been in Panama City since leaving Venezuela in December 2025 to collect the prize in Norway.